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EOSES. 298 ROSETTA STONE. Vork, fearing destruction, took up arms. In general the Xorth was Laiieastrian. wliile the South (especially London) sided with the York- ists. In 1455 the tirst battle of the war took place at Saint Albans. Vork was victorious, and wlien, shortly after, Henry again became insane, the Protectorate was reestablished. In 1456 the King recovered his reason and the Duke of York resigned. Meanwhile, however, the Earl of Warwick, the most powerful supporter of the Y'orkists, continued in rebellion, until in 1460 the .strife again became general. The royal army was defeated at Nortliampton and the King captured, and Parliament declared Kichard heir to the crown, thus excluding Ed- ward, the son of Henry VI. This last action aroused the Queen, Margaret of Anjou (q.v.), and she collected an array in the North. On December 31, 1460, the Duke of I'ork was de- feated and slain at Wakefield. His successor was his son, Edward, Earl of March, who on February 2, 1461, defeated some Lancastrian forces at Mortimer's Cross. Meanwhile Mar- garet was advancing on London, and on lier way defeated Warwick in the second battle of Saint Albans on February 17th, and released Henry, who had been in Warwick's hands. Edward hastened to London, and on March 2, 1461, as- sumed the crown as Edward IV. On JIarch 29th the decisive battle of Towton was fought. Ed- ward was completely victorious, and Margaret fled with Henry to Scotland. Since nearly all the great nobles were Lan- castrians, Edward IV. sought to conciliate the Commons, and increased their privileges. The civil strife for a while went on in a desultory way. In 1462 Margaret was again in Northern England, but in 1464 Warwick's brother, Lord Montague, defeated her at Hedgeley Moor and Hexham, and in 1465 Henry was captured and thrown into the Tower. Suddenly in 1469 War- wick, hoping to obtain still greater power, de- serted Edward IV. for Henry VI. His followers were defeated at Stamford, but Warwick fled to France, and there obtained aid from Louis XL, and with his new forces landed in England. Ed- ward IV. escaped to Holland, and Henry VI. was taken from the Tower and replaced on the throne. But Edward soon returned and on April 14, 1471, won the battle of Barnet, in which Warwick and Montague lost their lives. On May 4th Margaret was defeated at Tewkesbury, and her son was slain after the battle, while shortly after Henry VI. was probably murdered in the Tower, whither he had been taken after the battle of Barnet. The battle of Tewkesbury ended all effective resistance to the Y'orkist rule until the reign of Richard III. (q.v.). His unpopularity enabled the Duke of Richmond, the head of the House of Lancaster, to invade England in 1485. On August 22, 1485, Richard III. was defeated and slain at Bosworth Field, and Richmond became King as Henry VII. (q.v.). On January 18. 1486, Henry married Elizabeth, the daughter of Edward IV. and heiress of the Y'orkist family. Thus the rival dynasties were united. The chief results of the Wars of the Roses were the extir- pation of the ancient nobility and the reduction of Parliament to the position' of a tool of faction. This rendered possible the despotism of the Tudors. A good compendium of the whole sub- ject will be found in Gairdner, The Houses of Lancaster and York (6th ed., London, 1886). The fullest and best work is Ramsav, Lancaster and York, 1309-1J,S5 (O.xford, 1892). Consult also Kriehn, The English Rising in Hi50 (Strass- burg, 1892). ROSETTA, r6-zet'ta (Ar. Er-Rashid). A town and port of Northern Egypt, in latitude 31° 25' N., on the west l)ank of the Kosetta branch of the Nile, and about four miles from the mouth of the river. It is the modern representative of the ancient Bolbitine, which lay a little farther north. In the Middle Ages Rosetta was a place of considerable commercial importance, and it continued to flourish until the construction of the Mahmudiyeh Canal and the improvement of the harbor of Alexandria diverted most of its trade to the latter city. Rosetta still has thriving manufactories of sailcloth, leather, and iron, and exports a considerable quantity of rice, linseed oil. and oil of sesame. The population numbers aljout 14,000. See Rosetta Stone. ROSETTA STONE. A slab of black basalt bearing an inscription which was the key to the interpretation of Egj'ptian hieroglyphics. It wa.s found in 1799 by M. Boussard. a French officer of engineers in the trenches at Fort Saint Julien, near Rosetta (q.v.), and is now in the British Museum. The upper portion and the lower right- hand corner have been broken away and in its present condition it measures 3 feet 9 inches in height, 2 feet 4% inches in breadth, and 11 inches in thickness. L'pon it is inscribed in hiero- glyphics, in demotic writing, and in Greek, a decree of the Egyptian priesthood, assembled at Memphis, in honor of Ptolemy V. Epiphanes (B.C. 205-181). It is dated March 27, B.C. 195, and, after reciting the numerous benefits con- ferred by Epiphanes upon his coiuitry as well as upon the temples and the clergy, provides that the King's statue shall be placed in the sanctu- ary of every temple, and that divine honors shall be paid to him. It is further provided that a copy of the decree, inscribed upon a stele of hard stone, shall be placed in every temple of the first and second rank. The Greek version of the de- cree, containing 54 lines of text, is well preserved, though the ends of some of the lines are broken away. Of the hieroglyphic inscription. 14 partly mutilated lines, constituting about half the text, remain, while the demotic text (32 lines) is al- most entire. The Rosetta stone, by placing in the hands of scholars two long Egyptian te.xts, representing different periods of the language, together with a Greek translation, furnished the means whereby a knowledge of the long-lost tongue of ancient Egypt was regained, and thus opened the way for the great achievements of modern Egyptology. (For an account of the work of decipherment, see Egyptology,) Another tri- lingual inscription, containing a similar decree in honor of Ptolemy III., Euergetes I. (B.C. 247- 222), was found at Tanis in 1866, and has served to confirm the methods and results of Champol- lion and his followers. Consult: Letronne, In- scription grecqiie de Rosette (Paris, 1840) ; Brugsch, Die Inschrift von Rosetta (Berlin, 1850) : Report of the Committee Appointed hy the Philomathean Society of the University of Pennsylvania to Translate the Inscription on the Rosetta Stone (Philadelphia. 1858); Chabas, L'inscription hieroglyphiqiie de Rosette (Paris, 1867); Sharpe, Rosetta Stone hi Hieroglyphics